In 1991 approximately 1.8 million vehicles were stolen in the United States, about one vehicle every 20 seconds. Car theft costs at least $8.3 billion yearly and accounts for almost half of the total property lost to crime each year. Additionally, approximately $1.0 billion is spent annually in local law enforcement efforts to address car thefts and related crimes.
While improvements to vehicle security systems, such as car alarms and ignition and steering wheel locks, have made auto theft more difficult to amateur auto thieves, such devices are of little significance to the professional auto thief. The chance of apprehension, conviction, and imprisonment of an auto thief is less than one percent.
One drawback to the improvement of conventional alarm systems and other anti theft technology is that the mode of auto theft has changed. With increasing frequency auto thieves steal cars by commandeering the car from the owner at gun point--carjacking. While carjacking still accounts for a relatively small fraction of all car thefts, its violent nature, occasionally involving the murder of the owner of the vehicle, and its increasing frequency, as many as 60 carjackings per day, makes it a crime which is very worrisome to most motorists.
Conventional security devices such as alarm systems are plagued by numerous drawbacks. First, most professional car thieves are not deterred by or are able to circumvent the alarm system. Second, conventional alarm systems are usually ignored by the public at large. Most casual passersby ignore the sound of a car alarm as being the shriek of the proverbial boy who cries wolf. Third, car alarms provide no means for tracking a stolen vehicle, and, thus, do not aid in the recovery of the vehicle. Fourth, car alarms do not aid the victim of a carjacking. Most carjackers will not approach a vehicle until the owner of the car has disarmed the alarm system, and a person with a weapon held to his/her head is very unlikely to turn on an alarm for the fear of aggravating the robber to the point of taking some violent action.
To address certain of these deficiencies in car alarm systems, in particular the lack of tracking ability, systems have been developed which enable law enforcement personnel to locate stolen vehicles.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,223,844 to Mansell et al. teaches a vehicle tracking system in which the global positioning system (GPS) is used to determine the location of vehicles. The vehicles are further equipped with cellular telephone equipment for continuously tracking the vehicles in a fleet. Mansell provides for a separate keypad for entering commands to be sent to a control center.
These system suffer from the deficiencies that a separate keypad is necessary for communication with the security system. Further deficiencies include the lack of programmability and the inability to provide for a separate voice mode in which the identity of an occupant of the vehicle can be verified through spoken words. Prior art systems further do not provide for visual identification of the occupant of a vehicle.
It is therefore desirable to provide a system which provides for a security system which prevents theft and carjacking of vehicles, assists in the recovery of stolen vehicles, and which overcomes the deficiencies in the prior art.